Song and Season

A good, if tiring choir practice tonight with the Guilsfield Singers. We are, of course, already singing Christmas music. By the time Christmas comes - or at least our pre-Christmas concerts - we are either hopelessly in love with what we're singing or else we absolutely hate it. Usually both are true, for different parts of the programme.

Meanwhile, the world around is still very summery, or it has been today anyway. On a visit this morning to a suburban street in Oswestry I was amazed - and delighted - at the colourful displays in the gardens, which seemed more redolent of June than of the very end of September.  It's sad how many front gardens have disappeared under concrete or tarmac, and become car parks. For the most part that hadn't happened on this street, and it was a much brighter and better place for that. An attractive front garden is a gift to the community, I think. We're more likely to spend time in our back gardens, but a flowery and bright front garden will add a bit of happiness to the lives of those who pass by.

Michaelmas summer or not, we are on the run down to Christmas, though. Strange on a bright day like today to think that in three month's time the festival will be finished - or at any rate, we'll be in that strange period between Christmas and New Year. I find it really hard to visualise the bare trees and hard ground of winter when all around me is leafy and green (and, when winter does reach us, I shall find it equally hard to visualise the world in its summer clothes). The usual forecasts of an arctic blast are being aired in the newspapers. Out of interest, I looked to see what one pundit had said a year ago. Exactly the same as this year, I found . . . polar bears on the frozen Thames, that sort of thing. Bound to be right some time, I suppose . . .